Old School Hacks Vol. 3: Megadungeon Mayhem

The third volume in the Old School Hacks series is here and it's all about making megadungeons awesome!

This 34-page guide features four chapters of material covering:

What makes a megadungeon tick?

Tons of tools and advice for varying the environment, monsters, hazards, and challenges in the dungeon.

Variant and optional rules to help make megadungeon campaigns feel different from a standard dungeon-crawl adventure.

Tips, options, and a player handout (Motives, Goals & Connections) to help tie the Player Characters' backstories to the megadungeon.

An alternative Experience Reward System that focuses on the tropes and activities that make megadungeons different.

A Time Tracker that will help keep DMs and Players organized during dungeon-crawl play.

The Combat Sequence handout for DMs to add to their DM Screen, providing the full combat sequence at a glance and including optional Random Reaction and Morale rules for easy reference.

An entire chapter on Big Bad End Guys (BBEGs) and how to wrap up a megadungeon in a satisfyingly epic climax!

Whether you are using a published megadungeon like Undermountain as found in Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, a third party module, an older-edition-conversion such as the Temple of Elemental Evil, or are building your own megadungeon, this guide is sure to spark your imagination, ease the process of prepping your game sessions, and challenge your players for years to come!

This product also includes a one-column version optimized in 6x9 layout (except for the cover and handouts) for easier reading on tablets and smaller devices!

Developed and written by Tim Bannock. Edited by Ken Carcas. Cover graphical elements by Elena Naylor with art by Wizards of the Coast. Interior art by Rick Hershey/Fat Goblin Games and Wizards of the Coast.

Loaded with good tips and tricks for DMs new to running a mega-dungeon. I especially enjoyed the section on establishing a base camp. Organization of the material could have been slightly stronger, but overall a great good offering. [...]

I'm a few months into a Rappan Athuk campaign and this couldn't have been more timely. There is a ton of great material here for you to add elements to your campaign even if you are running shorter dungeons. I already use a modified version of the tr [...]

This supplement looks like the quintessential guide for anyone interested in running a megadungeon. It helps DMs guide players through the process of creating characters for the megadungeon and then through the megadungeon. [...]

These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.

Original electronic format

These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.